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Too low brightness in low ambient light.

Hi,

Just received my Fenix 8 AMOLED 51mm and sadly noticed its new feature, which significantly decrease the brightness in low ambient light. Not to be confused, I do not mean the configurable timeout (4, 8 or 16 sec) or focus or red shift either.

Imagine I am in a dark room. Brightness is set to maximum, battery saver is off, gesture is on. When I raise my arm, the screen comes up, but it is too dark. If I illuminate the watch display by a flashlight, the brightness goes up automatically. When I switch off the flashlight and keep the display busy, the brightness goes down again after a few seconds.

In this dark mode I hardly see the display, and can not see the small letters/numbers at all. I had no this issue with EPIX, of which brightness was independent form the ambient light.

Unfortunately I did not find any settings to get rid of this kind of dimming.

Any thoughts?

Best regards,

Istvan

Top Replies

Garmin-Laurie over 1 year ago in reply to 1246733 +7 verified

Update September 13, 2024:

We have received some great examples of this concern. So our engineers are aware of the concern with the display becoming too dim in low conditions. There will be a Software…
Garmin-Laurie over 1 year ago +3 verified

Hello Istvan

I am sorry to hear you are having trouble with this. If possible would you be able to capture some decent photos of what you are seeing in daylight, versus when there is no ambient light?
…
Garmin-Laurie over 1 year ago in reply to bw +1 verified

Hello,

Our engineers are looking into concerns of the display becoming too dark in low light conditions. If you are experiencing this concern, they would love to collect some good photos showing the display…
Garmin-Laurie 4 months ago in reply to Garmin-Laurie +1 verified

Update April 25, 2025:

Our engineers investigated concerns about the ambient light sensor dimming the watch too dark. They have determined this behavior is by design.

Your watch has an ambient light sensor…
5334613 over 1 year ago in reply to 7343684 +6

For me it happens in all watch faces (stock or from the IQ store) I wrote to Garmin Support and this guy Philip told me that they know the issue and they are going to fix with new software release. I hope…
5334613 over 1 year ago +5

I really don’t get why some people have to spam this thread.. original post is about deeming brightness in low light conditions bearing the amoled watch unreadable.. It’s not about MIP displays, it…

All Replies

0 chrabcio over 1 year ago

Same here, no option to change tha auto dimm when in low light environment.

0 ShukiMann over 1 year ago

Honestly, I think Garmin did it on purpose so they could present a 'battery improvement'.

They might as well sell us a beautiful AMOLED watch with an Always-Off screen. The battery life would be infinite ‍♂️

0 2529455 over 1 year ago in reply to ShukiMann

ShukiMann said:
Honestly, I think Garmin did it on purpose so they could present a 'battery improvement'.

Do you promise not to complain about battery life if you're allowed to crank the screen to max brightness in all scenarios?

0 ep013 over 1 year ago in reply to 2529455

It's never been about battery life though. Amoled just can't be left on at max brightness all the time or the display would degrade pretty quickly.

As for the minimum brightness I think this should be as configurable as possible to be honest. There are moments such as at night where I want my amoled displays to be as dim as they can go.

0 brecatto over 1 year ago

I spoke with Garrett with Garmin Support, they are aware of the issue and working on a fix

0 chrabcio over 1 year ago

Its not an issue, its a feature, if you use external flash on the watch display will increase its brightness.

0 1246733 over 1 year ago in reply to chrabcio

What do you mean by this? Using a external flash?

0 1246733 over 1 year ago in reply to brecatto

Some Garmin employees are apparently aware and some Garmin employees are not. I spoke to someone from Garmin yesterday and today who both happen to be wearing the Fenix 8 and they both didn't even notice that the screen gets very dark in dark environments lol..

0 5334613 over 1 year ago in reply to 2529455

What do you mean complain about battery life in a watch with 29 days battery? The same was with Epix PRO 51’ i replaced.. but the deeming was not there.. watch was always visible in all circumstances.. Fenix 8 is UNUSABLE in the night unless you put it under a lamp or your mobiles torch.. ridiculous!! THIS IS A HUGE SOFTWARE BUG!!

0 5334613 over 1 year ago in reply to chrabcio

YES right dude, in the night i will carry an external flash to bright my fenix 8 screen so i can read it.. What a joke for an 1300Euros watch.. its not a feature.. its A HUGE BUG that makes FENIX 8 unusable in the night..